


The Case of Being Reincarnated as Katara

by SailorHaumea



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Humor, Reincarnation, World Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22661692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SailorHaumea/pseuds/SailorHaumea
Summary: Okay, I was definitely not expecting the answer to "what happens when you die?" to be "you get reincarnated as Katara from Avatar: The Last Airbender." But apparently the multiverse hates me.
Kudos: 31





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I wrote this. I literally just thought "what if Dragon Ball: The Case of Being Reincarnated as Yamcha", but with ATLA and Katara instead? And that's how I wound up writing this.

When I was a little kid in my first life, one of the questions I used to ask was the old "where do you go when you die?"

Usually, that kind of thing would be answered by the religious figure of your choice - pastor, priest, rabbi, bishop, whatever.

However, when you're raised by vaguely religious Christians who stopped going to church when you were about four, and eventually settled on deism as the religious belief you ascribed to, you don't really get a chance to ask that question.

So, when I died, I had absolutely no idea what would happen.

But being reincarnated into a different universe identical to the world depicted in the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise was not one of my guesses. And even if I had somehow guessed it, I doubt the vessel my soul would inhabit turning out to be Katara would have been a logical step.

Ah well, I guess you make do with what you're given. I guess I'll talk to Aang when he wakes up. Maybe he'll be able to help.

Besides, the look on his face when he finds out that Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is actually the reincarnation of Jennie Casteel, a girl from a completely different universe, will be priceless. Poor kid, though.

In the meantime, though, I can make a list of things to do before Sozin's Comet arrives.

1\. Prevent Kya from dying. Should be simple enough - I'm guessing that the Southern Raiders only paid our village a visit was because someone Hakoda asked about finding a waterbending teacher for Katara ratted the village out. So just convince Hakoda I can wait to learn until I can get passage to the North Pole.

2\. Prevent Zhao from killing the Moon Spirit, Yue needing to sacrifice herself, and Koizilla killing thousands of Fire Navy personnel. Can I do this without killing Zhao? I kinda want the bastard to stand trial for his crimes, but it might not be an option.

3\. Prevent Jet from dying. Sure, the guy's this universe's equivalent of a terrorist, but he still doesn't deserve to die.

4\. Prevent Ba Sing Se from getting conquered. This hinges on convincing Zuko not to be an idiot. Given that this is Zuko we're talking about, it's a daunting task.

5\. Prevent the invasion on the Day of Black Sun from failing. Hinges on preventing Azula from finding out about the invasion from the Earth King.

6\. Prevent Azula from collapsing in a mental breakdown. The girl deserves better than what happened to her. Obviously trying to deprogram her of her father's conditioning is going to be really hard.

Of course, this could all go horribly wrong. Who knows what will happen if I meddle with the timeline?

Eh, it's worth a shot anyway.


	2. The Boy in the Iceberg, Part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aang awakens, and Jennie/Katara has some fun teasing him.

Honestly, ensuring that Kya lived proved to be far easier than I would have thought. Hakoda saw the logic in not risking someone leaking info about there being a surviving waterbender at the South Pole, and I worked on my waterbending on my own.

I also managed to get Kanna to disclose her Northern Water Tribe origins at one point, which was useful.

Hakoda still went off to war, and left Sokka in charge.

Eventually, the day that I had waited fourteen years for arrived. I knew it in my heart.

Sokka and I departed from the village in our canoe to go fishing one spring morning (blech, Southern Hemisphere seasons).

Surprisingly, I was actually able to catch the fish in the water bubble, unlike in the cartoon where Sokka burst the bubble with his spear.

Sokka looked at me in disbelief as I set the fish in the boat. "Nice job," he muttered.

One ride through the ice floes later, we found ourselves at the area where I knew Aang's iceberg would be.

"Great going, Katara, of course a girl would mess things up," Sokka said, in his typical early Book 1 sexist fashion.

I am so looking forward to Suki beating the sexism out of him.

Well, I guess I've gotta get mad and waterbend the iceberg open. I turned to face Sokka, putting on my best angry face. "What is wrong with you, Sokka?! You are the most sexist person in the entire village! I've had to endure your nonsense for fourteen years now! I'm done helping you go fishing! From now on, you're on your own!"

As my shouting increased in pitch, I gestured wildly. I could feel the iceberg cracking with my actions.

"KATARA!" my brother shouted, and I turned to loolk at the iceberg.

The ice broke apart, the waves pushing our ice floe away as Aang's iceberg surfaced, lit by the glow of the Avatar State.

"Okay, you've gone from weird to freakish, Katara," Sokka remarked.

I shot him a glare and he stopped talking.

I noticed Aang at that point, his body in a meditation pose. I grabbed Sokka's club and jumped across the ice floes, and began to chip away at the ball of ice.

"Katara! What are you doing?!" my brother asked.

"I'm getting the person inside here out!" I explained.

The ice shattered after a few hits, a pillar of light erupting into the sky. I could hear zebra seal calls in the distance.

The light dimmed, and Aang fell down the hill of ice into my arms. He soon opened his eyes.

"I need to ask you something..." he groaned weakly.

I gave him a grin. "Let me guess, you want to know if I'll go penguin sledding with me?"

He grinned back. "Yes! How did you know?"

I shrugged. "Most preteens like penguin sledding."

"Well, will you?" he asked.

"Sure!"

Then he seemed to realize that he had just gotten out of an iceberg. "What's going on here?" he questioned, looking around.

"Don't answer that! He could be a Fire Nation spy!" Sokka exclaimed in incomprehensible paranoia.

I stared at him and gave him a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look. "Sokka, Fire Nation spies don't tend to have the tattoos that are traditionally associated with Air Nomads in legends."

Sokka seemed to consider this for a moment, and then lowered his spear in embarrassment. "I knew I should have paid attention to Gran-Gran's stories she passed down from her ancestors," he mumbled.

I turned back to Aang. "What's your name?" I asked, although I already knew the answer.

"I'm Aang," he grinned. "I'm from the Southern Air Temple."

"I'm Katara, daughter of Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe, and this is my older brother Sokka," I introduced myself and my brother. Then I looked at Aang again. "Don't Air Nomads usually have sky bison?"

Aang visibly flinched at this. "Appa!" he realized, climbing up the ice hill and sliding down the other side, retrieving Appa.

"What is that thing?!" Sokka asked fearfully as Appa came into view.

"This is Appa, my flying bison," Aang answered nonchalantly.

"Right, and this is Katara, my flying sister," my older brother retorted sarcastically. I glared at him again.

Surprisingly, no Appa sneeze came.

"Giant light beams, flying bison, airbenders...I think I've got midnight sun madness. I'm going home, where stuff makes sense." With that, Sokka turned to leave, but then realized that the canoe was gone.

"Yeah, I'll stick with Aang and Appa," I said with a smug grin on my face.

Sokka and I clambered onto Appa.

"Okay, first-time flyers, hold on tight! Appa, yip yip!" Aang exclaimed, but as expected, Appa was unable to take flight, instead splashing into the water.

"Wow, that was truly amazing," Sokka deadpanned.

"Appa's probably just tired. Who knows how long he and Aang were in the ice?" I offered, stealing Aang's lines and paraphrasing them.

"Katara's right. After Appa rests a bit, he'll be ready to fly," Aang grinned.

Then the kid kept staring at me with a smile on his face.

Geez, Aang was already smitten with me.

"Aang, people don't usually like it when you stare and smile at them like that," I stated.

Aang seemed to return to reality at that. "Oh, sorry."

Sokka pretended to gag.

As we continued to move towards the village slowly on Appa, Aang shifted so he was lying back on Appa's head, staring at the sky.

I leaned over the saddle to look at him. "So, you're an airbender, do you know what happened to the Avatar?" I asked, already knowing the truth.

Aang tried to lie. "Uhh, no, I didn't know him. I knew people that knew him, but I didn't. Sorry."

I stared at him as if to say 'I don't believe you.'

"Aang, I've heard the stories about the Avatar before. About a defense mechanism called the Avatar State that is indicated by the Avatar's eyes glowing. Come on, you're not a very good liar." The lie was easy.

Aang looked flustered by this. "Uhhh...I'm sorry for lying to you, Katara. I am the Avatar," he confessed.

"It's okay, Aang. Get some sleep," I suggested, giving him a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jennie/Katara is certainly having fun teasing Aang, isn't she?


	3. The Boy in the Iceberg, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jennie/Katara confides in Aang about her origins, and the two explore an abandoned Fire Navy ship.

After we got to the village, we put the now-asleep Aang in a tent. I knew that the kid would have nightmares about the storm, so I opted to stay in his tent overnight.

As expected, he woke up the next morning with a shout.

"It's okay, Aang, you just had a nightmare. Come on, let me introduce you to the village," I offered.

He got dressed and then I gently grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the tent to introduce him.

"Aang, this is the entire village. Entire village, Aang." I grinned as I said the last part.

The village was quiet as they gazed at Aang in astonishment.

Aang turned to look at me. "Uhh, Katara, why is everyone staring at me?"

"Well, no one has seen an airbender in ninety-nine years. We thought they were all extinct," Kanna said.

Aang looked horrified. "Extinct?!"

"Aang, this is Kanna, my grandmother," I explained.

"Call me Gran-Gran," my paternal grandmother added.

At that point, Sokka grabbed Aang's staff. "What's this? Is this supposed to be a weapon? How are you supposed to stab anyone with this?"

Aang frowned and used airbending to pull the staff back into his hand. "It isn't a stabbing weapon, it's an airbender staff and glider." With that, he opened the glider part. "I use airbending to control the currents around the glider to fly."

Sokka was skeptical. "You know, last time I checked, HUMANS CAN'T FLY!"

"Airbenders can," I pointed out.

Aang did a demonstration by flying around to prove his point. Unlike in the cartoon, he didn't crash into Sokka's makeshift watchtower, instead landing safely on the ground.

"Great! You're an airbender, Katara's a waterbender, together, you can just waste time all day long!" Sokka shouted.

"You're a waterbender?!" Aang asked me in amazement.

"Not really. I'm the only waterbender left at the South Pole. The Fire Nation captured all the others long ago," I explained. Then I frowned. "And Gran-Gran says that women aren't allowed to learn how to use waterbending for fighting at the North Pole, so I don't have anyone to teach me."

Aang looked confused. "What are you talking about? Why would the Fire Nation capture waterbenders?"

I let out a sigh. "Aang, the Fire Nation has been at war with the rest of the world for ninety-nine years now."

Aang stared at me in bewilderment. "Huh? I've never heard of any war."

I turned back towards the rest of the villagers. "I think I'm gonna talk to Aang about this in private, okay?"

I walked with Aang out of the village and to a vast field of snow full of otter-penguins.

"Aang, there's a few things I need to talk to you about," I said.

Aang nodded. "Sure, what's up?"

This was my best shot currently at figuring out how I got reincarnated into this world. "What I'm about to tell you stays between us, okay?"

He nodded again.

"I'm not originally from this world. I was born in a completely different world with the name Jennie Casteel. But when I died, I was somehow reincarnated as Katara in this world with all the memories of my past life," I confessed. It would be best not to disclose the part about the world being almost identical to that of a work of fiction in my universe of origin just yet. "Which brings me to my next question - since you're the Avatar, I was wanting to know if you knew anything about my situation."

Aang shook his head. "Sorry, Jennie, I've never heard of anything like what you've described."

I smiled. "It's okay, it was worth a shot. And please, call me Katara. I may have once been Jennie in the past, but I have been Katara for fourteen years now. It's my life now."

Aang grinned. "Okay!" Then his face turned serious again. "What was that about a war you mentioned earlier?"

I sighed. "We can discuss it later. For now, I believe I agreed to go penguin sledding with you?" I gave him a smile.

His face lit up.

One penguin sledding ride later, we arrived at the old abandoned Fire Navy ship.

"What's that?" the Avatar asked.

I frowned. "A Fire Navy ship from one of their raids decades ago."

Despite my words of warning about booby traps, the monk went in anyway.

We made our way to the armory and he examined the weapons. "Katara...," Aang asked, his voice trembling. "You said the war has been going on for ninety-nine years, right?"

I nodded grimly. "I'm sorry, Aang. You were in that iceberg for nearly a century." I turned towards the door. "Come on, we should be getting back to the village."

We triggered a tripwire as we were heading for the door, and the door slammed shut. I heard whirring and hissing, then a sound closely resembling thaf of fireworks launching.

There was a loud boom as the flare went off.

"I probably should have listened to you about the booby traps, shouldn't I?" Aang realized.

"Yup."

With that, he scooped me up into his arms and we jumped through a hole in the ceiling, landing on the exterior of the ship, and then he started jumping across the smokestack's structure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Aang is basically the only person at this point that knows that Katara is a reincarnated girl from a different universe, although he doesn't know the entire truth yet. Also, Jennie/Katara deliberately let the flare get set off so that Zuko wouldn't just keep patrolling the southern polar waters indefinitely.


End file.
